Sounds are everywhere: as noises, acoustic signals, music, ringing in the ears or words spoken in a foreign language. Faint fragments of sounds define the experience of large spaces; the electronic world is full of sound icons; geo-taggers post environmental sounds from all over the world on virtual maps. In film, such sounds have long since stopped being mere shadows of visible events and instead play a complex part in the narrative. Together with moving images, they create new meanings in the viewer or may point towards the archaic and archetypal. They transport viewers to unfamiliar locations by immersing them in a sound bath. Sounds can be comical, animistic, evocative or alien. How did this become possible? During the 20th century, new technologies and emerging art forms helped to emancipate sound to the point where sound design could be used to create emotional impact. Sound can now operate on the same level as music, and in some films it even took centre stage. The core of the book consists of in-depth descriptions of carefully selected films, highlighting the different approaches of various directors, sound designers and composers. We use these examples to explore histories of sound in film on both an aesthetic level and a technical level. In these histories, we show that meaning is not fixed but oscillates between the moving images, the sound track, the story and the viewer. Our intention is to contribute, from a German perspective to the discussions on film sound in the anglophone and francophone worlds. This book is not just for film specialists, though, but for anyone who is moved by sounds, tones and music.
Table of contents
Film sound – ways of perceiving
IWatching films: methodology
IISound worlds
1.Discovering sounds
2.The human voice
3. Development of reproduction technologies
IIIThe field of perception
Listening viewer, image and sound.
Image, sound, music, speech in the field of perception
1. Artificial sounds
2.Sound design in film
3.Metaphors of movement
4.The human voice in films
5.Perscpectives: Murch, Chion and others
6. Surround – sound bath in 6 channels
IVFilm sounds
1.Atmospheres
2. Silent movies
3.Being there – documentary sound
4.Evocative sounds
5.An animistic theory of screetching tyres
6.Angels, prehistoric men and robots
7.Alien sounds
VThe other film sound – Individual aesthetics
1. Media noise 1979
2.Comical sound in Play Time
3.Sea gulls and crows: Hitchcock
4.Horror of the everyday: The Exorcist, Halloween
5.Films about film sound
List of films
Bibliography
Indexes (persons, concepts)
[270 pages]
Table of contentscommented
Film sound – ways of perceiving
IWatching films: methodology
We are observing how people listen to their environments and how this is reflected in the medium of film. As in the real world, sound doesn't exist on its own, isolated from the other senses. Only by watching a film, i.e. seeing moving images and listening to a soundtrack, in other words in the act of perception is the filmic art work completed.
We adopted a phenomenological approach to harvest the richness of filmic perception: what happens in detail when I watch a film? We tried to answer this question again and again watching different films, noticing our reactions, our sense making and taking notes, in writing and importantly as recorded comments immediately after watching a film scene. The purpose of this methodology was to avoid rushing into false generalisations or forcing the phenomena into pre-conveived categories. This "bottom-up" approach is reflected in a meandering style, both in terms of lateral associations and in the overall structure of the book. Themes slowly emerged over a period of three years of writing. This means that some films are analysed from various, different perspectives, complementing each other and demonstrating the complex, never completed act of making sense of a film.
We created the neologism "Seherhörer", translated literally "seeing listener" to stress the multisensorial nature of fim perception. But this is not enough. Even though the film is fixed on an objective medium, which has its own reality, the experiential horizon of the film viewer in terms of awareness, education and knowledge plays a significant role in the construction of the filmic reality, which is not static and can change over time (reception theory).
We acknowledge the power of music to evoke emotions, but our main focus is sound itself, which also has evocative and emotional impact. The nature of sound is multidimensional. We can consciously hear many different events simultaneously. During a film performance the flow of images, the narrative, and dialogue, environmental sound and music in the soundtrack create a field of perception in the listening viewer.
Writing as a technology working only with visual symbols, i.e. letters and words, excludes all other senses. Film, eventhough technically treating sound and images separately, is an audiovisual medium combining two sensory perceptions. We oberserve a tendency away from mono-sensory perception, in particular from the visual, towards an audiovisual consumption in many areas, which can easily be observed on the internet.
The subtleties and ephemeral character of our film sound observations will put a high responsibility on a good translation.
IISound worlds
1.Discovering sounds
The concept of film sound comprises everything, which can be heard in a cinema and from a loudspeaker, apart from music. "Everything" includes the sound of distortion of a badly tuned loudspeaker or the sound of scratched analogue optical film and of course the atmosphere, the on-screen sounds as well as the oneoff-screen and the voices of speakers. Sometimes even music becomes a sound amongst others when it originates in the images, from within the story, i.e. when it diegetically emerges from the narration in the stream of images, sounds, from the reality of the film as incidental music, like a found sound object or when music takes over the function of sound effects imitating or replacing them.
In the real world sound is often associated with noise. We discuss and observe sounds and sound effects in everyday lif and how we perceive them today and in history. We mention aesthetic theories about noise (Russolo, Cage, Schafer's acoustic ecology) and how literary authors write about sounds/noise (in German there are three words: sound, noise, and Klang, i.e. musical sound). Then we enquire how sound is reflected in recorded media, databases, radio art, sound art. This constitues a collective memory, which film directors can tap into.
2.The human voice
The sound of the voice is the most familiar sound for humans. On a physiological level our ear is designed specifically for the optimal audio perception of the voice.
3. Development of reproduction technologies
An overview of aspects of audio reproduction technologies over the last century.
IIIThe field of perception
The field of perception is defined by three elements:
a. The listening viewer – It is an individual with his past, in particual his experiences as a film viewer, his education, abilities and knowedge. He is influenced by his cultural environment, its technological level, the moral customs of his society, fashion as well as his current physical and psychological state.
b. The flow of images – This constitutes the stringency of a film, i.e. the visual clarity, the logic of the narration and the aesthetic expression.
c. The flow of sounds – The expressive mixture of words, music and sounds: the comprehensibility of speech, the familiarity of the heard, the emotionality of the heard and the associative and evocative power of certain sounds.
The structure of the field of perception is not triangular. It is more a field of crossing lines in which filmic perception is located and where in the act of perception the film viewer has to go through each time in a new way. We are trying to make detailed observations of this changing process of film viewing to make sense of the parallel universum of moving images.
The psychology of perception tells us that we filter what we hear paying attention only to certain sound objects (Donald Broadbent).
1. Artificial sounds
The ear is an organ to orient oneselves. The dimensions of a space define the reverberation. Acoustic room design is a traditional means of preventing espionage, as in the conference room of the Topkapi Serail in Istanbul: next to the entrance door to this room there is a small fountain. The noise of the water prevent any illegal listening behind the door.
Sound design occurs where people live. Cars receive a certain audio identity, audio branding is applied to all sorts of tools, e.g. a Windows PC.
2.Sound design in film
Sound design was practiced in films long before the concept was coined by Walter Murch, e.g. in Forbidden Planet (1956), The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Fritz Lang, 1933) or Bresson's A Man Esacped (1956).
3.Metaphors of movement
Music can represent an atmosphere or sound design. It can become a metaphor, e.g. for the movement of the stars or God. In the Age of Enlightenment music became of science of sound, which has a physiological effect when listened to. According to Daniel Chua (1999: 80) "sound in the eighteenth century was explained by Newtonian physics and its meaning by physiology; music was seen as motion and its effect was in the body."
4.The human voice in films
The voice has a priviledged position in most narrative film soundtracks to carry the semantic meaning of spoken language.But the voice does much more. The sound of the voice creates sub-texts, which are often more important than the rational surface. The status of a speaker, his emotional state and his true intentions often only reveal themselves metaphorically through the tone and inflection of his voice.
We explore the voice in different situations: dialogue, as coment, in documentary film, as dubbed voice, as inner monologue, as off-screen voice, as acousmetre. What is the quality of a voice in terms of emotional expression, scream, projection, disability, in media or as mysterium.
5.Perspectives: Murch, Chion and others
Our analytic methodology is multiperspective. In this chapter we look at films and listen to their soundtracks through the eyes and ears of Walter Murch and Michel Chion. Both are practitioners and theoreticians, who have substantially contributed to the understanding of film sound.
6. Surround – sound bath in 6 channels
How is the concept of immersion realised through the technical apparatus and in film history? The ultimate aim of the director is to entice the listening viewer into a diegetic immersion. Surround sound is yet another tool to achieve this. The point is not to represent the acoustic reality more precisely but to create an augmented filmic reality, a diegetic reality which can be totally fictional. Today surround sound is used dramaturgically.
IVFilm sounds
A sound in a film is part of this film. Its character is defined only by the film, which means, it adopts certain function only through the context of a film. Extremely varied acoustical events as part of the sonic world act in the fields of perception in film works.
We have selected some film sounds, because they are typical for repeating film situations, because they fulfill certain evocative functions. We demonstrate how the lack of sound can work as film sound; we observe, how artificial beings speak, how a conglomeration of sounds condense to an atmosphere; and enquire which role electroacoustic music played in film over the last 60 years.
1.Atmospheres
The concepts of space and atmosphere are interlinked. Atmo is a soundscape, a multitude of sound objects and their reverberant reflections filling a space. A film without atmo is an alien world. If it lasts a longer period it is interpreted as defect of the apparatus or as something ominous. Hearing has physiologically the function of orientating the listener in space.
Atmosphere is also used as a metaphorical concept: e.g. a sad, a relaxed atmosphere etc. Stage designers create atmospheres through light, colour and objects. This indicates that we perceive our environment as atmospheres, we perceive ourselves in a certain state of mind and emotion within these atmospheres. On the other hand, atmospheres are the way, how things and environments present themselves.
The ear is better at interpreting the spatial dimensions in close proximity. The eye can be deceived through optical effects. Film directors exploit this. They sometimes use sound to enhance and dimension visual events, which might otherwise seem harmless, e.g. a gun shot. In the film Earthquake (1974) the director Mark Robson used very deep Infra-sound, which cannot be heard anymore, but only felt.
Atempts have been made to include the sense of smell as Odorated Talking Pictures (1940), Aroma Rama (1960) or Smell-O-Vision (1960).
Case studies are the documentary We feed the World (2005): The Hurt Locker (2008) designs war as a sound installation; and Alien (1979) which defines the enormous space ship through sound and had the striking slogan: "In space no one can hear you scream".
2. Silent movies
Silent film is important to reconsider for two reasons alone: it defined the use and conventions of music with moving images; and it plays skillfully with the art of implied or imagined sound.
Silence as a concept has been explored in various other art forms: music (Cage), painting (Malevich) and the soundscape movement (Westerkamp).
In film silence is used in various forms: as general pause; as background silence (Psycho, 1960); as avoidance silence (Rififi 1955); as silence of the grave (Kill Bill 2, 2004); as cold silence (Stalker, 1979 or 2001: A Space Odyssey); silence as vacuum (The Silence, Bergmann 1963).
3.Being there – documentary sound
Documentary approaches imply being closer to reality and the notion of authentic sound and images. A closer analysis reveals these concepts as ideological. Film is always constructed reality. What has changed, in particular through the invention of the Nagra, and other portable small AV-recording devices is the film aesthetic, which in feature films has become more documentary.
4.Evocative sounds
Cerain sounds, by nature or by convention, have become powerful symbols and are able to evoke strong feelings like music: a church bell, the waves of the sea, a dog barking in the dark night, sirens, fire, water dripping, rain, metal banging in a large rerverberant space, the ticking of a clock, a radio playing, telephone ringing etc. How is this possible?
5.An animistic theory of screetching tyres
Sound effects occasionally can replace music altogether. The screetching tyres and roaring power-engines in the chase in Bullitt (1968) have in their stylised intensity something animalistic. They have become much more than themselves.
In American Graffiti (1973) the rock music from car radios become tools of identity for the youth defining the public space of the town through the resonances of the music as theirs.
6.Angels, prehistoric man and robots
Angles are aireal, pneumatic beings who are able to convey information between different worlds. What kind of language do they use? How does it sound? Film is attracted to these aetherial beings in an in-between world constructing dramatic situations aound them.
Equally some directors explore, closer to our world, pre-historic man and try to imagine and reconstruct his language with the aid of linguists. The insights gained in language design can then also be applied for the futuristc utterances of extra-terrestrial beings, of which the klingonian language must be the most prominent.
Robots speak in similar, yet different ways to humans. What happens if one excludes all emotion from verbal expression (HAL) or only uses sound gestures without codified semantic meaning (R2D2)?
7.Alien sound
Science Fiction and Horror films occupy a specific sound world. In acoustic terms SF & Horror have been avantgarde genres, because here the latest sound design techniques and experimental music aesthetics have been tested and explored. The lines between sound effect and music were constanly blurred. Musique Concrete and Elektronische Musik merged into electroacoustic music, which found a rich field in Sci-Fi & Horror. 20th century avantgarde music of Ligeti and Stockhausen have been used or adapted, 12-tone techniques are common in horror films, and the first complete electronic soundtrack was introduced by the Sci-Fi film Forbidden Planet (1956). We try to trace the origins of this peculiar association between Sci-Fi and electronic music/sound.
VThe other film sound – Individual aesthetics
The concept of the genius, firmly located in the 19th century, or auteur, as used for French and other film directors, seem to be somewhat antiquated. Yet inspite of film being essentially a team effort some directors have created very idiosyncratic styles of expression. We look at some of these directors more closely: Fassbinder, Lynch, Tati, or Hitchcock.
1. Media noise 1979
2.Comical sound in Play Time
3.Sea gulls and crows: Hitchcock
4.Horror of the everyday: The Exorcist, Halloween
Good horror films stress the normality of the every day in order to make the slowly emerging horror even more frightening.
5.Films about film sound
Some films put the audio-visual apparatus at the centre of their stories: The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933), Singin' in the Rain (1952), Blow up (1966), Blow Out (1981), Diva (1981) or Lisbon Story (1994) are some examples we analyse.